


Duty and Desire

by AriesOnMars



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Moral Ambiguity, Pre-Het, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 00:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13963329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesOnMars/pseuds/AriesOnMars
Summary: There is a conviction in all things that the Darkness hates the Light. This is not true. The Light gives shape to the Darkness, and the Darkness gives meaning to the Light. They exist more intimately entwined than any would like to think.On Mortis this balance is no different.





	Duty and Desire

 

The Father believes his Son hates his Daughter, and that is all he thinks and all he knows. He protects her by keeping her close during the dark nights and he lets her roam only during the bright days. Her glowing brilliance is lost in the washed-out whiteness of the light, and where he sits and sulks in the shadows her Brother cannot see her well. But he does not hate her.

 

He loves her.

 

When his Sister sees him in a shadow, weak in those bright days, she does not shy away and she does not run. Because she knows him, as deeply as she knows herself, and she smiles at him. That kind gesture is unseen where the brightness blinds him, but he feels his Sister’s affection deep within him. It is in his heart and it is in his mind, and he knows that she does not fear him.

 

She loves him.

 

They are forced into these roles their Father has assumed they would have taken naturally. When his Daughter lingers outside as the Darkness comes he chides her on her return and tells her to watch out for the selfish and ugly things that stalk the nighttime world. Selfish they are, but never ugly, because her Brother is first and foremost among those selfish beings and she sees in his wicked eyes a darkness that burns with love, although twisted, and a freedom that takes flight alongside his leather wings. In those few fleeting moments Duty and Desire come together in the twilight of their world. He has a moment of selflessness as he holds back and does not take her away with him and from the Father who needs her; she has a moment of selfishness as she presses her lips to his and she entertains thoughts of flying away never to be seen again.

 

The beautiful and righteous things scream at the impending darkness and gore the offspring of night to death; those ugly monsters that will be terrors in the starlight stretch and wake and plot their revenge for their fallen. But the Father never sees these things. If he saw them he would stop them, because it is not how he believes their world should be. What he sees in the morning are the lovely corpses of those righteous creatures’ children that litter the ground. The Darkness has taken away his own beloved dead and buried them in the dark earth, never to be seen. The Light mounds her beautiful fallen on a pyre to burn into a glorious light and lift the ashes to the heavens. The Father watches the pyres burn but he never sees the graves. He assumes his Daughter is pure and perfect and persecuted.

 

He does not know his children.

 

He does not know that every twilight his Son whispers to his Daughter and urges her to come away with him.

 

“ _Come with me into the night. Fly with me, far away from here. Let me show you what you don’t know how to do, let me show you how to be selfish, how to take what you want. I don’t want to give you my love. I want you to take it.”_

 

And the Father does not know that every dusk it takes his Daughter just a little longer to answer her Brother with the same sweet words she always tells him before she kisses him and returns home.

 

“ _Not tonight.”_


End file.
